Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast.

Today's podcast has been edited and adapted from Peace, Power, and Plenty by Orison Sweat Martin, published

in 1909.

However troubled you have been during the day, do not go to sleep until you have restored

your mental harmony, until your faculties are poised and your mind serene.

Scientists tell us that our mental activity when going to bed

continues far into the night.

These mental impressions just before going to sleep, the thoughts that dominate

the mind, continue to exercise influence long after we become unconscious.

We are told, too, that wrinkles and other signs of age are formed as readily during sleep

as when awake, indicating that

the way the mind is set when falling asleep has a powerful influence on the body.

Many people cut off the best years of their lives by the continuation in their sleep of

the wearing and tearing influences that have been operating upon them

during the day.

Millions of professional men and women are so active during the day, live such strenuous

unnatural lives that they cannot stop thinking after they retire for the night, and sleep is thus driven away,

or only induced after complete mental exhaustion.

These persons are so absorbed in the problems of their business or vocations

that they do not know how to relax, to rest, so they lie down to sleep with all their cares,

just as a tired camel lies down in the desert, with its great burden still on its back.

The result is that instead of being benefited by refreshing, rejuvenating sleep, they get up in the morning weary, much older than when they retired.

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